Ask HN: Are there any innovative startups in the porn/adult industry? - <AUTHOR> Just curious. I am, like many men, a fan of quality porn and wonder if anyone is trying to solve problems in that industry. Or is too taboo? <comment><USER2> Cindy Gallop's "Make Love Not Porn" ([http://www.makelovenotporn.com](http://www.makelovenotporn.com)) is trying to solve some of the issues around the rise of Internet pornography (addiction, detachment from intimacy, unrealistic/degrading portrayal of women, etc).

She's approaching it from a great, sex-positive way but is having issues whenever the company touches the "regular world" \- hard to get funding, taken seriously by non-adult industry people, payment processing, etc.

The "problems" in Internet porn do not appear related to reducing barriers to access or better tech, but in solving issues with how people cope with sudden, instant access to a historically unprecedented amount of material.

Yet again, porn is trending ahead of regular tech use, which is also starting to deal with the same issues of addiction, information overload, how to monetize premium content in the face of a vast universe of free, tech saturation causing detachment and loss of intimacy (and the controversy over whether it does any of these in the first place).

<comment><USER3> Here's another data point confirming the "regular world" issues you mention: [http://recode.net/2014/10/17/its-hard-out-there-for-a-sex- to...](http://recode.net/2014/10/17/its-hard-out-there-for-a-sex-toy- entrepreneur/)

<comment><USER4> _Rybchin said she suspects it has something to do with tech being dominated by men, who might be nervous about working with a sex-toy startup: "All these companies are run by men, and they don't appreciate a woman's pleasure."_

I don't know whether this really is the underlying issue, but damn, it's unfortunate how plausible it is. And the reaction from Stripe to the reporter's request for comment all but confirms.

<comment><USER5> I work at Stripe. Some details in the article aren't very accurate.

But, more broadly, we actually work hard to push against the rules in many cases. (Cindy Gallop, mentioned earlier in the thread, can attest to this -- we spent ages trying to figure out a way to accept payments for her startup.)

<comment><USER6> In the end Stripe could not work with her or other startups that feature "a naked person" on the product they're selling (the article seems to claim), is that correct? I'm assuming then pay-for-porn sties are not permitted business with Stripe either?

<comment><USER7> They are not, anything classified as "High Risk" cannot be serviced by Stripe, Balanced, Braintree, etc.

Again, from my research, it is because the partner banks will not allow them to.

<comment><USER6> Hm, okay. Though, it's not clear to me why porn sites en masse would be classified as "High Risk"? Are you sure this is always the case? How are current popular porn sites doing this?

And, now that Stripe is quite big, don't they have some leverage over the banks to be able to say they _do_ want porn sites et al. to be able to work with Stripe?

<comment><USER8> The porn sites are classified as "high risk" because the banks believe/know that type of business has above average chargebacks. Apparently banks want to keep their chargebacks to a minimum.

<comment><USER9> Irony: [http://makelovenotporn.com/](http://makelovenotporn.com/) wants to make sex and the discussion around it socially acceptable and socially shareable - our mission is to change the way the world has sex for the better, via socially-shared #realworldsex. As such, we operate completely openly, transparently, legally and ethically, and I can count the number of chargebacks we've had in 20 months of operating on the fingers of one hand (couples watch our videos together, our community isn't hiding etc etc). But the financial world refuses to even have a conversation about the fact we do business differently and don't encounter the same risks. Which is why people regularly tell me we need to find a politician/lobbyist who'll support us, a la bitcoin/Uber lobbying, to redefine what constitutes 'adult content' and the legislation around it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The guys I know in the industry are mostly on the bleeding edge of stream tech both hardware and software. The sheer size of the industry in proportion to the entire internet means that some giant portion of all IT in the world work in the space.

The guys I know all communicate in private communities though, and not for the taboo reason but because the industry is overtly hostile and aggressive towards competitors. There are only 3-4 big players and they play dirty(no pun). They own the pay sites and free sites. They leak their competitors product on their own free site and pair it with upsale ads to their own sites. It is very dog eat dog and hard to innovate in because of the players not the taboo.

<comment><USER11> I think it's also about the taboo. You can't go to the police and say "Some site is stealing my porn!" without getting laughed at.

<comment><USER10> I agree that the taboo exist. But I would suggest that the AE industry is one of the most aggressive litigators in entertainment, I don't think they are afraid to use the courts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Porn sites are janky, unpolished, often half-broken, and prone to suddenly disappearing as quickly as they appeared.

This is what innovation looks like.

I think they are the definition of innovation in online content delivery of any kind. Live video streams, monetizing content, creating minor internet celebrities who can live off of their online work, confronting head-on issues of privacy and censorship. All of these things and more came far earlier in internet porn than anywhere else, and theres a good chance that whatever edge they're struggling with will be where the rest of tech finds itself shortly thereafter.

It's like graffiti in the subway as a precursor to ads for HSBC. It may be grimy, but they have nothing to lose so there's a good chance what they're doing is a brilliant move.

<comment><USER9> Funnily enough, while that used to be true, it's no longer the case. The tech world has advanced to the point that it's outstripped the porn industry, which is struggling for the business reasons I outline here in my open letter in Wired, 'Don't Block Porn, Disrupt It':

[http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-08/14/cindy- gallop-...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-08/14/cindy-gallop-open- letter)

That's what makes #sextech a huge, huge opportunity - including bringing everything that innovates, does well and makes money in every other sector online - including great design. This is my co-founders, Corey Innis (CTO) and Oonie Chase (UX Lead) talking to BusinessInsider about how you design and build a sex site that isn't a porn site:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/designing-make-love-not- porn-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/designing-make-love-not-porn-2013-4)

<comment><USER12> I think it is still the case. The production of porn is democratizing and becoming a smaller and smaller economic blip as its production dissipates, so I agree that the economic model is hurting. I also think its serving a valuable social function which is exposing our expectations and fantasies of sex as the ludicrous oddities that they are, despite our protestations that we are mature and civilized.

<comment><USER9> At MakeLoveNotPorn we're entirely pro-porn - our tagline is 'Pro-sex. Pro- porn. Pro-knowing the difference.' And we're utterly non-judgemental - #realworldsex is all-inclusive, of anything and everything anyone in the world likes doing. This is what we mean when we say we're not porn, not amateur, but #realworldsex:

[http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/2013/04/01/what-is- realw...](http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/2013/04/01/what-is-realworldsex- the-first-in-an-occasional-series/)

Porn in the abstract is absolutely, as you say, a valuable tool for exploring our sexuality, finding out what turns us on, learning there are other people with the same tastes out there. The issue isn't porn, but the absence of an open healthy dialogue around sex in the real world, which is what lies at the heart of the business problems this comment stream highlights, which in turn force the porn industry down worse and worse routes: when you force anything into the shadows and underground, you make it a lot easier for bad things to happen, and you make it a lot more difficult for good things to happen.

That same lack of open healthy discussion around sex is why these social problems exist - the ones that MakeLoveNotPorn is out to tackle:

[http://www.ippr.org/assets/media/publications/attachments/yo...](http://www.ippr.org/assets/media/publications/attachments/youngpeoplesexrelationships.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My problem with modern porn as an industry is the low production values. Even big (ish) budget movies suffer from bad acting and ridiculous plots. Adult games only exist as a hobbyist past-time--they are few and far between and you have to be really "hard core" to be able to enjoy them.

So, I'm trying to solve the problem by creating adult games that have realistic plots. My goal is to try and create a niche and prove that adult games can be a profitable business, so that big players take interest and we see some major adult titles that are rated "A" not because of the gore and violence in them, but for the erotica/porn content.

Since I'm only one person, I have to start small, with sub-genres where it is possible for one person to make something worthwhile in a reasonable amount of time--currently it's illustrated interactive fiction. So far I've released one game that is more of a demo than a full featured game. I'm currently working on my second game which is much bigger.

<comment><USER14> > Even big (ish) budget movies suffer from bad acting and ridiculous plots.

Probably because most of the audience does not care about acting or the story.

So before you invest your time and money make sure the users actually want good acting and a story in porn.

<comment><USER13> I don't know of any other way of making sure other than putting out a pilot release and seeing how it does. So far the stats look pretty good: lots of people have played my pilot game and liked it. I've received a handful of donations, and since donations rarely work in general, I think there's an opportunity worth exploring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd love to make XXX videogames. There aren't many serious players in that space, and I'd love to go after it. I can't do it alone, though, I need artists and a couple other capabilities besides software development. When I pitch the idea to people I'd like to work with on this, they don't want to participate in that space. So yes, there's definitely a stigma for a lot of people.

I've done a good amount of sex things in different venues ranging from phone sex systems to phone dating systems to sex robots in Second Life, so I've long ago lost my aversion to such things. But it surprised me how many people seem to be scared of participating in the industry.

It's easier to make high quality content now than ever before, and it's only going to get better from here.

<comment><USER16> I'm the co-founder of MiKandi, the adult app store. Adult games are a top search term in our store. If you're making adult Android or HTML5 games, I'd love to get in touch. We just made our first game, Fap Ninja. It was challenging but so much fun to make! If you're looking for artists, I recommend looking on deviantart, hentai foundry, furrafinity, and pixiv.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> And to answer your question even more specifically - here's a list of founders and ventures doing innovative things in this space:

Kit Maloney, Oactually [http://oactually.com/](http://oactually.com/)

Cyan Banister, Zivity [https://www.zivity.com/](https://www.zivity.com/)

Tina Gong, HappyPlaytime [http://happyplaytime.com/](http://happyplaytime.com/)

Sarah Jayne Kinney, UnboundBox [https://unboundbox.com/](https://unboundbox.com/)

Dema Tio & Hermione Way, Vibease [http://www.vibease.com/](http://www.vibease.com/)

Danny Wax & Tyler Elick, Spreadsheets [http://spreadsheetsapp.com/](http://spreadsheetsapp.com/)

Akbar Dhanaliwala, MinnaLife [http://www.minnalife.com/](http://www.minnalife.com/)

Kathleen Funk & Alan Harris, XSync [http://xsync.com/](http://xsync.com/)

Colin Hodge, Down [https://www.downapp.com/](https://www.downapp.com/)

Ben Tao, Offbeatr [http://offbeatr.com/](http://offbeatr.com/)

Kaitlin Prest & Mitra Kaboli, AudioSmut [http://audiosmut.ca/](http://audiosmut.ca/)

Roger McNulty, Gasm.org [http://gasm.org/](http://gasm.org/)

Joe Nelson, TheyFit [http://www.theyfit.co.uk/](http://www.theyfit.co.uk/)

Meika Hollender, Sustain [http://sustaincondoms.com/](http://sustaincondoms.com/)

Sherif Maktabi, Glance [http://www.glanceapp.info/](http://www.glanceapp.info/)

Cassie Robinson [http://www.cassierobinson.net/](http://www.cassierobinson.net/)

Kathy Harris, Slixa [https://www.slixa.com/](https://www.slixa.com/)

Christian Thorn, Pinsex [http://www.pinsex.com/](http://www.pinsex.com/)

<comment><USER17> Hi. Alan with xSync here. We're a sex-positive sextech startup that synchronizes vibrators to adult videos. Our web service is built on some very innovative technology.

What Cindy said about how difficult it is for an adult startup is absolutely true. We're launching our pilot soon, but this technology would've reached market much more quickly if we were mainstream. We typically can't talk as openly about our ideas. Some adult startup founders run into trouble with family and friends. VC is also incredibly challenging because they nobody wants to be known as "the adult VC" in a financial world that patently discriminates against anything labeled adult.

At xSync we don't produce our own content or our own vibrators. Our website is completely clean, but because we have links to the videos on 3rd party adult sites where users can experience xSync, PayPal or your typical payment processors aren't willing to let us use their services.

We definitely encourage you to follow all of the innovative companies in this space, just know that, for the time, our products will take a little longer to reach market than you might expect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> We're in the process of launching our first product at Comingle([http://www.comingle.io](http://www.comingle.io)), making Arduino- based, open source and hackable sex toys.

We're making a sex toy platform (our library is named OSSex of course) so that it won't matter if your sex toy is made by guys. You can reprogram it to your liking, attach sensors that respond to your feedback or even build your own.

It is super hard to find a payment processor, but I imagine that their hands are tied by the card networks. I bet Stripe would love to support adult payments if they could: lots of adult specific processors charge like 14%. Seems like that'd be some nice action to be a part of, even if only in the adult industries that are lower risk (the adult industry is huge and there's no way some dildo shop is as high risk as a cam site, even though every one treats them the same.)

<comment><USER19> WOW! Looks very interesting!

We are not denying that it's the banks that are the problem. Last I checked, the money that my company generates is as green as the money as an non-adult company makes. It's just a shame that banks and companies that work with those banks, like Stripe, are making blanket statements that all adult related businesses are risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What are you looking for, innovative content delivery, production style, search technology, payment schemes?

What problems for example?

All the main video sites you go to are startups that are trying to innovate and make money. Porn is a very competitive industry. Pornhub and redtube for example are innovative startups it's just hard to amit it to ourselves because they are peddling smut.

<comment><USER21> Their websites are horrible, though, and the content is pretty meh.

<comment><USER22> Their analytics is top notch though.

The whole thing is based on what pays, and from what I've heard from friends in the industry the last couple of years "If it's not gay it doesn't pay". There is simply so much free stuff around that there's not much to be made in the mainstream.

<comment><USER9> This is MakeLoveNotPorn's revenue-sharing business model (we're part of the sharing economy, just like Uber and Airbnb):

[http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/2012/09/20/how- makeloven...](http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/2012/09/20/how- makelovenotporn-tv-can-help-the-global-economy/)

Our business model is the opposite of the porn industry's, where pornstars, no matter how well-known, get paid by the scene, on a payscale that may range from a few hundred dollars and tops out at a thousand or two for a scene, even for the most famous and celebrated pornstars. That scene goes on to be viewed billions of times on Brazzers, Naughty America, whatever, but the pornstars never see a cent from any of that. There are no residuals in porn - if there were it would be a very different industry - which is why pornstars need to supplement their income with live camming, dancing, Fleshlights, hushed up escort work etc.

With our model, the more people who enjoy your videos, the more you stand to make. We're only 20 months old in public beta, tiny, bootstrapping and battling every day, but in a world where the received wisdom is 'Nobody pays for porn' they're paying for #realworldsex. Here's one of our members on 'Why I'm Happy To Pay $5 To Watch Real World Sex':

[http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/2013/05/02/why-im- happy-...](http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/2013/05/02/why-im-happy-to- pay-5-to-watch-realworldsex/)

and a number of our MakeLoveNotPornstars are already making four figures at each payout. (We are the answer to the economy :))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> [http://www.pornmd.com/](http://www.pornmd.com/) is a very interesting site.

For one, it scrapes all the top sites.

For another, you can see what people search for in which region. I.e. I am in Denmark and danish people apparently wants to see danish porn. I wasn't aware of that.

For a third, they have a live-search which is quite interesting. (and amusingly, read aloud by porn actors here: [http://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=1025156889](http://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=1025156889))

For a fourth, they also have a chrome extension, which if nothing else is curious as the adult industry has so far shied away from apps and such (I believe because of regulations).

Another interesting take is [http://www.porniq.com](http://www.porniq.com) The site speaks for itself.

<comment><USER24> Those are Pornhub/Mindgeek projects. We are hiring if anyone is interested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> There was an interesting discussion about technology stacks in porn here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6137087](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6137087)

</comment><comment><USER26> My girlfriends company, [https://zivity.com](https://zivity.com) is testing out some waters on a few things. Zivity has been around for awhile, where you pay for votes and you vote on your favorite sets, and pays out pretty well to their artist. Right now they are testing a sexy crowdfunding site, where you vote for which theme you want to win. Live Preview/Beta ([https://fund.okidokiokami.com/](https://fund.okidokiokami.com/))

</comment><comment><USER27> The adult industry isn't lack of innovation, it has pushed the wide implementations of VHS, Online payment, Virtual Reality, teledildonic, etc.

The much needed disruption is how to bring positive impacts to the mainstream market by using sex technologies, without leaving the sex element. How to use sex technologies to help couples to stay intimate, increase safe sex awareness, help individuals to understand his/her sexuality, sexual wellness, help men to understand female orgasm (no, it's not about bigger dick), etc.

In the recent years, we started to see sex-positive startups stepped up to this challenge. From MakeLoveNotPorn, Jimmy Jane, Crave, RevelBody, HappyPlaytime, PerfectFit, DOWN (Bang With Friends) and many more. I'm the co- founder of www.vibease.com, the world's first wearable smart vibrator. I created Vibease because I was in a long distance relationship and I couldn't find any solutions that was easy to use and not invasive. Eventually we 'pivoted' to create immersive pleasure experience for women using audio erotica.

Cindy Gallop from www.makelovenotporn.com has been a great advocate to disrupt the old adult industry. She successfully brings the hard topic, porn to be discussed in the society. She takes the good parts of porn and leaves the bad ones behind, to encourage a healthy discussion about sex.

The challenge is that these startups always being treated like the old shady sex business, especially from the mainstream and holy (aka. hypocrite) institutions. The best way to overcome this problem is to pitch it boldly and hide nothing.

</comment><comment><USER28> Hi guys, great discussion! @Striking, thanks for mentioning our company Faploid! Due to the overkill of free porn online these days, piracy and the overkill of scam websites, we decide to create [http://www.faploid.com](http://www.faploid.com).

Faploid hasn't officially launched, but has already build an active audience, is socially accepted and actively mentioned and promoted by various mainstream media outlets. Faploid's users are as diverse as the content we serve. They are socially engaged, digitally equipped and searching for safe and quality adult content in an user friendly environment.

All content including movies, pictures, articles and more are based on our user's taste and interests. Faploid evaluates millions of new adult content every day and uses this information to match content to their personal interests and then delivers them automatically to their personal Faploid magazine.

Our users aim high and for that reason we only work directly together with the best publishers/content owners in a variety of niches from A to Z. For them Faploid isn't only a trusted partner in brand building, but also a quality partner in sending them traffic of people who are seriously interested in their content and willing to pay for safe and quality adult content.

After a long time of developing and deal making, we're in our run up to public launch. In the upcoming months, partly because of the enormous positive attention we´ve received from both (mainstream) business and consumer side, we will invite all the subscribers on our waitinglist step by step.

Cheers, Team Faploid

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm someone making porn but trying my hardest to fund it without making it a business. It became important to create a model that wasn't reliant on profit. I try to treat it as a co-op.

Often it feels like the issue with the industry is that it's so uncertain financially that it's too scared to make content for anyone other than the assumed stereotype porn consumer (straight dudes mainly) so there's over saturation of very similar, repetative content which breeds a strange, one- upmanship quest for never ending novelty.

The ease of access to consistently good and cheaper video equipment (dslrs that support video etc) mean that the people making the most interesting work exist outside of the industry, uploading onto tumblr or sites like clips4sale. Basically they're Etsy of porn, allowing independence from selling the rights to your work to big companies. They take a bit of searching but they're like gold dust when you find them.

our work is: [http://afourchamberedheart.com](http://afourchamberedheart.com) [http://fourchambers.tumblr.com](http://fourchambers.tumblr.com)

</comment><comment><USER30> It just surprises me that mainstream brands haven't embraced advertising on porn sites. There is no reason why there couldn't be a Hulu style high end porn site with real ads from like Budweiser, Old Spice, Mountain Dew, Red Bull, Comedy Central. There might be backlash for the first company to advertise but after that I can't imagine people would care.

<comment><USER9> Porn sites have tried, but it's really tough. We want to help break down the social barriers that prevent that. However, here is one mainstream brand who wholeheartedly embraced that and wrote up the BEST.ADVERTISING.EFFECTIVENESS.CASESTUDY.EVER. This is Eat24's hilarious report on 'How To Advertise On A Porn Site':

[http://blog.eat24hours.com/how-to-advertise-on-a-porn- websit...](http://blog.eat24hours.com/how-to-advertise-on-a-porn-website/)

and here's what we plan at MakeLoveNotPorn as our version of advertising - Forget Sex In Advertising, How About Advertising In #realworldsex?

[http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/2013/09/25/forget-sex- in...](http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/2013/09/25/forget-sex-in- advertising-how-about-advertising-in-realworldsex/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hey! We have a company called [http://Enjora.com](http://Enjora.com), which tries to give a whole new way of watching porn, and separate itself from the malicious and low-end porn tube sites by giving credit not just the actors and producers, but provide the users full-length adult movies. Enjora.com is a streaming service, like Netflix, where you can watch high quality porn videos from multiple productions companies for a low monthly fee. Although we are still in the development process, we already contacted a lot of producers, who realised that its win-win-win situation because the users get their movies in HD, without annoying ads, on a well designed easy to use website. You can follow channels, porn-stars, and multiple fetishes. Apart of the search engine, we are planning integrated payment methods like mobile, crypto- currencies, and Paypal which makes easier - and more trustable - to pay for our service.

</comment><comment><USER24> We do pretty innovative and fun things at Pornhub. We're hiring too if you're interested.

<comment><USER32> I'm curious, assuming you are hiring tech staff, do you find any difference in the quantity or quality of applicants compared to other, non adult, tech companies?

<comment><USER24> Quantity and quality is the same. We are in Montreal though so there is not as much talent as other cities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> One thing I thought about was to have a reverse porn search(by using an image) See that reddit has an /r/tipofmypenis , where people are seeking the porn they once saw, or they have a picture of it.

It would be quite powerful if it work with publishers and has face recognition ability, so when people upload a screenshot, they can be directed to the porn video over at the publishers.

Also, it is strange how one cannot search by body type by specify a 3D model of the body... we can only use descriptive terms.

</comment><comment><USER34> [http://faploid.com](http://faploid.com) has been in beta a long time but it's gotten awards. Hopefully it works out soon.

</comment><comment><USER35> I think Erika Lust's Xconfessions.com is one of the better approaches to rethinking pornography I've seen so far. Using the public's own sex confessions, published on the site anonymously every day, Erika has established by far the most sophisticated and innovative crowdsourced erotic cinema ever seen. Each month, she picks two of the best submissions and turns them into beautiful, original and edgy adult short films.

</comment><comment><USER36> There was a talk at SXSW this year that was called the "Relieving Frustration The UX of Porn" that showed insights on how the Porn industry was innovating in UX design and showed how mainstream sites were following in its footsteps it was a good talk.

[http://www.slideshare.net/SteveJohnson35/relieving- frustrati...](http://www.slideshare.net/SteveJohnson35/relieving-frustration- poir)

</comment><comment><USER37> VR porn is a new area with difficult problems to solve.

<comment><USER38> Given my new position at my workplace, I now have access to all sorts of gadgets and tech stuff.

One thing I've been playing with is a EEG headset with Oculus Rift. My initial idea is to utilize brain patterns with Oculus content to increase certain emotions.

For example, when one is playing Doom 3, the monsters come out closer and scarier when you are already frightened. Or if you're bored, nothing happens to try to increase suspense.

Of course, this could easily be taken to the adult industry. The same feelings of heightened sexual arousal could be coupled with more intense visual stimulation.

<comment><USER39> EEG is a mess of noise - it's easy to determine things like 'up', 'down', 'left', and 'right'. If you're really precise (user isn't moving very much and has one of those caps that uses electro-gel) you can infer activations of certain parts of the brain, however i don't know how correlated they'd be to non-strong emotions like boredom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It seems that porn business pushed technology for e-payments and data storage/transfer:

[http://www.enterprisefeatures.com/2011/06/ten- indispensable-...](http://www.enterprisefeatures.com/2011/06/ten- indispensable-technologies-built-by-the-pornography-industry/)

I have no idea if now they are frontiers of innovation.

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't know if they are a startup but the page of chaturbate feels linke one.

Like the idea of shared cams where all people can see even if just a few pay. Also That the people on the cam can do their own thing.

Most innovative idea I've seen in That sector for long.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm delighted you ask that question! I can tell you that there are plenty of us, but that as #sextech entrepreneurs we fight a battle every day to build our startups. Every piece of business infrastructure any other startup can at least take for granted, we can't, because the small print always says 'No adult content'. This is me and other #sextech founders interviewed about this by Fast Company:

[http://www.fastcompany.com/3029634/bottom-line/the- difficult...](http://www.fastcompany.com/3029634/bottom-line/the-difficulties- of-running-a-sex-inspired-startup)

and the Daily Beast:

[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/29/silicon- val...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/29/silicon-valley-s- soft-sex-ban.html)

Silicon Valley welcomes innovation and disruption in every other area of our lives except this one - which is why I gave this short talk at New York Tech Meetup back in Feb on why the Next Big Thing in tech is disrupting sex, and intro-ed Colin Hodge of Down and Dema Tio of Vibease to demo their products (go to sex+tech in player):

[http://mlb.mlb.com/media/player/entry.jsp?calendar_event_id=...](http://mlb.mlb.com/media/player/entry.jsp?calendar_event_id=14-402301-2014-02-05&source=NYTM)

and why I organized a 'Changing The World Through Sex' track at Social Media Week New York also in Feb:

[http://socialmediaweek.org/newyork/events/?id=139287#.UqhnJP...](http://socialmediaweek.org/newyork/events/?id=139287#.UqhnJPRDuAh)

You can get a sense of the various #sextech startups who demo-ed in 'Sex Tech Shark Tank' here :)

[http://seen.co/event/social-media-week:-sextech-new-york- cit...](http://seen.co/event/social-media-week:-sextech-new-york- city-2014-6240)

We welcome as many people as possible to join us in disrupting sex and porn - for anyone interested, this is my talk on 'The Future Of Porn' at SXSW last year:

[http://www.sxsw.com/interactive/news/2013/cindy-gallop- celeb...](http://www.sxsw.com/interactive/news/2013/cindy-gallop-celebrates- real-life-sexuality-sxsw)

and I spell out the business opportunity in my open letter to David Cameron and Silicon Valley published by Wired last year - 'Don't Block Porn, Disrupt It':

[http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-08/14/cindy- gallop-...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-08/14/cindy-gallop-open- letter)

One day I want to start the YCombinator for porn - who's in? :)

[http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/15/makelovenotporn-founder- wa...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/15/makelovenotporn-founder-wants-to- make-the-y-combinator-for-porn/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for all the information you've provided Cindy, I was not expecting this much of a response. I basically got nothing on Reddit.

I'm going to study everything in this thread and use it for my startup. I have some ideas of how human sexuality can be explored through using technology without losing our humanity. Hopefully, we can all change the perception of porn and the dynamics of the industry.

I will post again in due time. :)

<comment><USER17> I'd recommend connecting with a few amazing & sex-positive accounts on twitter.

@cindygallop @makelovenotporn @happyplaytime @mikandistore @oactually @simplysxy @missemmamcg @orgasmatronics @xSyncTech

There are so many more, but that should get you on track to surrounding yourself with people who want to positively effect change through sex tech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Not really a start-up but a Django one-weekend project:

"isexdb is the biggest global directory of adult entertainment locations worldwide"

[http://www.isexdb.com/](http://www.isexdb.com/)

Programming mostly done by my buddy.

</comment><comment><USER43> For your reference, [http://www.gfy.com](http://www.gfy.com) is the "HN" of the adult industry.

<comment><USER44> More of a board for adult affiliates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Glad someone asked, its just the thing we need to innovate!

<comment><USER9> Exactly. The Next Big Thing in tech is disrupting sex. :) #sextech

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Great stream of comments, I figured I would weigh in with our experience.

I founded Revel Body (www.revelbody.com) with the goal of using our new vibration motors to build better vibrators. We have been working on increasing the sensation and versatility of our products (more power and a broader range of vibrations than existing products) and removing the drawbacks of noise, reliability, numbness, etc. Right now we build and sell the most powerful, quiet and reliable battery-powered vibrator on the market. It is strong enough for muscle massage and can do things like create underwater suction and vibration (using the backside).

Unlike a lot of brands in the 'sex toy' world, our branding and design aesthetic are purposely designed to be clean, healthy and accessible. We focus on health and wellness as a way to enable consumers to buy and try our product. We want to remove barriers from people trying our products. We believe that the industry could double in size if people we not embarrassed to buy these products, so we are focusing on enabling that. We need to remove stigma, give people permission, etc. Focusing on the many almost endless medical benefits of regular orgasm is our focus right now.

These products are about as intimate a product as anyone can use, but they tend to be called 'sex toys'. This does not do justice to some of the better products our there, but probably is good for cheaper/mass market items. Toys are cheap and do not do anything important, and these are not just for sex in the traditional sense. Some brands are starting to use 'pleasure product', but we are looking for a new name for a high quality category of products like we build. Personal Appliance is too bulky. I would love if someone could put together a new for this category of product which really captures what these products can do.

We launched on Indiegogo, because the biggest crowd funding site would not allow 'sexual' related products. We blew past our goals nicely, but do not think kickstarter will come around and allow other sexual related products.

Unlike other sexual products, we have had good success at raising equity capital. We have done three small rounds which closed very fast and we ended up leaving many investors on the outside. I think our experience was different because we had a technology disruption story that made sense as well as being able to point out the many ways in which the industry is mainstreaming and growing rapidly. These points create a path for a company that can disrupt and industry as well as lead the charge to make it mainstream, which will lead to a great exit when a big consumer product is looking to enter this industry (they will want the best brand and technology). Other companies like Crave (raised $2.4M to angels), and Pipedream and Peekay show that mainstream PE money is entering this space.

There are ways to position companies for investment if you understand how investors view these kinds of investments; they are looking for an exit based return and to be part of something cool. Think of what kind of company would be bought (build versus buy decision). On being part of a cool startup, I think it is difficult to imagine better cocktail party talk than being part of a disruptive vibrator company. Companies in this space will probably do better with angel investors than with VCs, many VCs are funded by institutional funds which limit investment into 'morally questionable' activities (think fun stuff like sex, drugs, tobacco, rock and roll).

Like other sexual start-ups, we have had a lot of issues with other companies not wanting to do business with us because our sexual nature or association/proximity to porn start-ups. This includes banks, merchant accounts, advertisers (Facebook included), retargeting ads, etc. It is ridiculous but if you plan for it, you can work around it.

Lots of interesting things going on here...

</comment><comment><USER16> Oh man, you've just opened the floodgates. I just love to geek out on this topic. :)

I've been in the adult industry for almost a decade- both in "hardware" (sex toys) and software (mobile app store, video streaming). What sort of innovations are you looking for? Content, social, tech?

A sex toy company I find innovative is Revel Body. Most vibrators use a rotary motor that spins an off-kilter weight to create the vibration. Revel Body developed their own patented linear motor that uses magnetic fields of alternating polarity to slide a weight back and forth in a linear motion. It's super quiet, more powerful and last longer than the older motors. They also designed their own chip to give the user precise control of the frequency and speed. I would have loved to have used RB's motor in the toys I designed.

Lovepalz has the Zeus and Hera toys that couple hardware with software for long distance partners. Minna toys have pressure sensitive control panels.

The folks at Utherverse created an immersive adults-only virtual world. I believe they launched a major overhaul to their platform last month. They've also built a VR compatible platform specifically for the Oculus Rift universe. In terms of VR porn, Utherverse is at the forefront.

For software, I think we tend to look at consumer-facing sites and products, but there's a wealth of tech innovation happening behind the scenes. SendFaster, while not an adult company (but a tech co that powers a number of adult sites, mine included) has amazing TCP acceleration and image compression software.

While not a startup, Streamates developed their own live streaming technology that's used by millions of visitors daily.

Speaking of my company, I co-founded the MiKandi Adult App Store. We launched almost 5 years ago as the first adults only app store, before Android really hit it big. Being early adopters of Android and one of the few third party Android app stores at the time, we really dove head first into it. Under our belt today, we've got app distribution, mobile video streaming, in-app billing, notifications, DRM and content management, and soon-to-launch an ebook reader, mobile game creator, and comic reader and creator. We've tried to push other tech forward but are usually shot down soon after launching them- our Google Glass adult app, Tits & Glass, and our third party Chrome app store, MiKandi Mint.

As far as the problem we're trying to solve, it's less about a problem in the adult industry as much as it's a problem in the mainstream tech and banking industries, which is being discussed a lot here. I wrote about the hostile business world here: [http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/sextech-startups-in- a-hos...](http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/sextech-startups-in-a-hostile- business-world)

</comment><comment><USER47> [http://www.kamaxcitra.com/](http://www.kamaxcitra.com/)

</comment><comment><USER48> I have not the competences to do something like that but in my opinion this is original hacking. In a small town of Sicily (near where I live) some guys are making incredible stuff with retro - computing. They have restore hold computers like PDP11, apple one with all original components.

[http://museo.freaknet.org/en](http://museo.freaknet.org/en)

<comment><USER48> Sorry for this comment, I wanted comment another article( iphone issue)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Is porn really "taboo"? Or is the idea merely useful for justifying the state of the industry? What is OP's response to Robert Jensen [1], Germaine Greer [2], Corina Taylor [3], Clara Bennathan [4], Meghan Murphy [5], and Gail Dines [6] [7]?

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbxBJf9UtWg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbxBJf9UtWg)

[2] [http://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/sep/24/society](http://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/sep/24/society)

[3] [https://www.thepinkcross.org/pinkcross- articles/october-2011...](https://www.thepinkcross.org/pinkcross- articles/october-2011/ex-porn-star-corina-taylor-story)

[4] [http://www.bad-housekeeping.com/2014/01/08/violence- teenager...](http://www.bad-housekeeping.com/2014/01/08/violence-teenagers- and-gonzo-porn/)

[5] [http://feministcurrent.com/9087/meghan-murphy-on-elliot- rodg...](http://feministcurrent.com/9087/meghan-murphy-on-elliot-rodger- misogyny-and-porn-culture/)

[6] [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/05/convers...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/05/conversation- gail-dines-anna-arrowsmith)

[7] [http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/freelance/pornographyisale...](http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/freelance/pornographyisaleftissue.htm)

<comment><USER50> I don't think you know what "taboo" means. It doesn't mean it's not harmful.

<comment><USER51> Wiki says: "A taboo is a vehement prohibition of an action based on the belief that such behavior is either too sacred or too accursed for ordinary individuals to undertake, under threat of supernatural punishment."

This clearly does not describe pornography, not even the Pope thinks this.

<comment><USER52> I'm not sure if you're a native English speaker or not, but the meaning of taboo extends farther than this. A simple definition would be something like "something prohibited to do/mention in respectable company"</comment></comment></comment></comment>


At PubNub we ride dinosaurs and fight zombies with lasers - <AUTHOR> http://www.pubnub.com/zombies

<comment><USER2> Extract from <http://pubnub.com/jobs> :

       Our ideal person is someone who lives and breathes code,
       and understands the difference between C, Python, and Javascript.

Well Python doesn't use as many semicolons as the others. Am I hired?

</comment><comment><USER3> Your /jobs page throws over CORS 100 errors in Chrome all fixable by requesting the google maps libs through http instead of https, since that's what you page uses.

While you've there, you might want to either change to v3 since you're using the v2 of Google Maps which has been deprecated since May 19, 2010, or better yet, remove it all together and just embed a static image.

Like this: [http://maps.google.com/maps/api/staticmap?center=37.765043,-...](http://maps.google.com/maps/api/staticmap?center=37.765043,-122.394529&zoom=13&markers=color:black|37.765043,-122.394529&size=278x200&sensor=false)

<comment><USER4> Thank you! We fixed it! <http://www.pubnub.com/jobs>

<comment><USER3> Glad I could help you guys.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the best HN Open Source variant? - <AUTHOR>

I´m currently involved in a small project where we try to improve the diffusion of innovations in a clinical setting. In our discussions, it turned out that a "little HN for doctors and researchers" might be a good approach worth trying.<p>My question here: What is the best and most simple HN OS variant out there and how far does HN welcome to use these? <comment><USER2> <https://github.com/reddit/reddit> reddit source code is available for anyone interested in building something similar. should be more full featured than HN

</comment><comment><USER3> As far as I know, HN is open source: <http://ycombinator.com/arc/arc3.tar>

<comment><USER4> But a terrible idea to actually use

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Telescope: <http://telesc.pe/></comment>


Dark Clouds Over the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/01/opinion/dark-clouds-over-the-internet.html?emc=edit_th_20151201&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=59761154&_r=0 <comment><AUTHOR> I posted this article even though I don't agree with a lot of it.

Privacy is a basic human right and I believe that media blitz of propaganda supporting reducing rights of privacy is wrong.

A friend of mine talks about us being "good ancestors" to future generations. We should protect privacy and use of encryption for business and personal use, not just for ourselves, but also for future generations.

Once rights are taken away it is difficult getting them back.</comment>


Ask HN: Why do Tor users have to solve captchas to read HN? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> because cloudflare

<comment><USER3> Yes, but why has Hacker News chosen to force this upon Tor users? Given the audience, I think they should whitelist as per these instructions:

[https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/203306930-D...](https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/203306930-Does-CloudFlare-block-Tor-)

<comment><USER4> > they should whitelist

To get the attention of the moderators email firstname.lastname@example.com</comment></comment></comment>


Tinyrb: small Ruby VM inspired by Lua that's easy to understand and learn from - <AUTHOR> http://macournoyer.com/blog/2009/02/12/tinyrb/

<comment><USER2> Ruby without blocks is like fat-free bacon.

<comment><USER3> Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to call it _evil_ , but yeah I agree it's not exactly Ruby.

Using Lemon is an interesting choice. Our product is very parser-heavy, and we've played with most of the mainstream libraries. I'm not sure what the win is with Lemon over Racc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > It all started 2 weeks ago.

And I posted this 2 weeks ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=458663>

Coincidence?</comment>


Review: Between Two Millstones: Sketches of Exile by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - <AUTHOR> https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/the-most-dangerous-man-in-the-world/ <comment><USER2> >Solzhenitsyn reminded people that having the right to do something does not make it right. What troubled him most was that elites trivialized the civilizational struggle between freedom and tyranny.

>Under despotism, Solzhenitsyn could readily spot an informant or a self- seeking careerist. In the West, where almost everyone seemed forthright and earnest, he put his faith in people who let him down or took advantage of his inexperience.

Wow this actually hits close to home.

I've certainly been a more naive type, and sadly fallen for the same kind of thing even growing up here.

There are some good people, but I think we're falling apart without enough of them and it is hard to talk about this.

<comment><USER3> In a society built on lies, truth is a powerful thing, and vice versa.

So I wouldn't say too few good people, just that they aren't in position to do anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do yourself a favor and read 'Warning to the West'.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/219822.Warning_to_the_We...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/219822.Warning_to_the_West)

</comment><comment><USER5> Reading a bit more about this guy he seems to have some interesting views. He points to Atheism as a key reason for the death of 60 million people under the Soviets, and states that America capitulated too early in the Vietnam war.

<comment><USER6> > _He points to Atheism as a key reason for the death of 60 million people > under the Soviets_

Not very far off. In their fervor, the soviets replaced a millennia old in their parts known quantity religion, with an atheist cult of "communism", the all-known "party", and the "new man". That strand of militant atheism operated the same way, and worse, than actual religion.

One could e.g. murder people and let go of compassion, as that was a "christian" thing. What supposedly mattered were the end results (the building of communism). Heck, they even made mummies and pilgrimages of their supreme leaders...

Dostoyevsky had already said pretty much the same (e.g. in the Possessed, and in Crime and Punishment), regarding the new revolutionary fervor in Russia and where Russia was headed, 100 years before Solzenyntsin.

<comment><USER5> > Dostoyevsky had already said pretty much the same

Wasn't Dostoyevsky also religious?

<comment><USER6> Yes. His point wasn't that religion is bad.

His point was that the kind of revolutionary mania emerging in Russia was bad, and a kind of atheist substitute of religion (which, in its fervor and conviction lacks its controls and subtlety).

<comment><USER5> I suppose though it'd be very in character for a religious commentator to see religions as having controls and subtlety that atheism doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Growing up in Russia, Solzhenitsyn was one of my childhood heroes and still is. But I value him mostly as a reporter. The Gulag Archipelago was a success of reporting. I'm less excited about his work as a writer (in the moralistic Russian tradition which was always boring to me) or as a teacher (why did he try to teach the West from a position of inexperience?)

</comment><comment> r-andrey [https://web.archive.org/web/20190509004035/https://www.clare...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190509004035/https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/the- most-dangerous-man-in-the-world/)

</comment><comment><USER8> One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is one of my all time favourite books, it is as meaningful with words as the best works of Chekhov and shows the power of the human spirit.

</comment><comment><USER9> Heh.

>He decided not to settle farther north because he thought Canadians were too nice and lacked spirit.

</comment><comment><USER10> is this how assange will be remembered too?

<comment><USER3> Of course not. He'll die in jail, awaiting The Process. As a warning to other journalists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Error code 16

This request was blocked by the security rules_

Does anyone have an alt link?

Edit: here it is: [https://outline.com/NbS3kF](https://outline.com/NbS3kF)

<comment><USER12> neither link works for me</comment></comment>


Contempt Culture (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.aurynn.com/2015/12/16-contempt-culture/ <comment><USER2> > implying that people using the language weren't as good me, weren't good > programmers. [...] someone with that background would feel othered by me > [...] I was actively participating in the exclusion of women from STEM.

Wut?

It's possible that OP was being an ass to women, but this has absolutely nothing to do with one's opinion of various programming languages. There's no such thing as a programming languages "for girls".</comment>


When programmers are real programmers or just know how to do it dudes - <AUTHOR> http://romansnitko.posterous.com/when-programmers-are-real-programmers-or-just

<comment><USER2> To clarify his terminology: the "real programmer" values the _means_ ; the "dude" values the _ends_.

It's a question of what one _values_ , and this does tend to be mutually exclusive, in the specific sense that _when_ they are in conflict, you must choose one over the other - which one do you choose? That shows what you value. While you can be highly skilled at both, you will tend to focus on what you value more, and therefore practice it with greater attendance, and therefore get better at it (and you probably were better at it in the first place - which is why you value it). I think Catmull (of Pixar) is a great example of brilliance at both means and ends - but he values ends.

This "real programmer" is a professional, who will tend to be obsessed with technical skills, whether they are useful or not, because to him these skills are valuable in themselves. The "dude" is an entrepreneur, looks at what is needed, and how these needs can be met.

Here's an illustrative story: I met a surgeon who worked in Nepal for 10 years, as a missionary, religious calling. Although he tried really hard, and worked really hard, he felt he didn't make any lasting impact, and in fact, he said that "digging ditches" for sewage would have helped more people, by preventing diseases through better sanitation. I was excited about this deeper understanding, and asked him why he didn't do that. He said that it was because he was a surgeon, and his skills would be wasted if he didn't use them. He cared more about means (being a surgeon) than ends (actually helping people). He was a _professional_.

I enjoy solving problems. It's exciting, interesting and engaging. But it seems to have a kind of negative basis, like a doctor preferring sickness to health, or a priest who practices always compassion, never appreciation.

But in the end, it's far better to care about something - whether it's means or ends - than to care for nothing at all.

<comment><USER3> Almost anybody can dig ditches but fewer specially trained people can do surgery. Leaving aside remuneration and social status, when optimizing the use of your resources, you'd let people with that training to the surgery in order to achieve your goals in the most efficient way. So one could say that he actually cared about optimal use of human capital in order to best (= in cheapest way possible) achieve the goal. If you take the problem to that level, do you still care about the means or the ends?

<comment><USER2> Good point, thanks, I was thinking I should have addressed that. The thing was that no one was digging ditches. Yes, given a choice, it would be more efficient to use unskilled labour than a surgeon... but it would be better to have a surgeon doing it than having no one doing it.

In practice, I imagine his role as an advocate and organizer: a kind of charity-entrepreneur, and maybe leading by example, gandhi-style, rather than being an ordinary ditch digger. "This is so important, that I can save more lives by doing it instead of doing surgery". Of course, there are many problems with making infrastructure changes, cultural, practical, political; and maybe it needs special talents, skills, values and especially personality that even a highly intelligent, competent and committed surgeon may lack. But if you believe that's the best way to improve health, and you are committed to improving health, then...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's definitely a huge ego thing in distinguishing yourself as a "real programmer" or perhaps a "software engineer," vs. "a <x> who programs" or "a weekend hacker." In other words, a professional vs. an amateur. I don't think it reflects at all on the quality of the work, though, just on the attitude brought to the table.

The professional is going to want to overengineer, more often than not, because surely, with all the vast knowledge and experience they've accumulated, tackling the business's requirements with a quick hack is beneath them when they could do a "real" long-term solution instead! Right?

Coming at it from the "amateur" perspective instead is going to shift the perspective towards the opposite - the underengineered "good enough for now" solution that may ignore fundamental architectural problems until they've blown up into huge monsters.

So for a startup or early-stage product, the amateur attitude is probably the more worthy one, and as the concept establishes itself into more refined forms, professionalism, process, and specialization can take hold.

But the skills could easily be just as good from either angle - you just have to learn to "flip the switch" and use the right attitude for each situation. I've spent a long time obsessing over programming practice, and it's only been recently that I've managed to make myself back off. This conveniently started to happen only as I started pushing myself 100% to build a real, user-facing product, vs. some development tool or hack.

</comment><comment><USER5> First, the "know how to do it dudes" thing is kind of lame. But that's not super relevant to the argument he's making.

I think the author has an interesting idea, but kind of fails to follow it through to the end. More than anything, he's hinted at a division that I think is present here at HN.

My only beef is that he was kind of a dick about why 'real programmers' would do what they do. "Of course it does not mean they're destined to work their whole life like that - they can still quit and start their own company, but probably not as much because they want more money and their own business, but more because they disagree with, say, the corporate policy for brackets {} style." This, as much as anything, solidifies the authors argument that he is not a "real programmer".

I think that real programmers get excited in the same way that the "dude who ..." (and so on) does, but only about products that have the properties of both being incredibly technologically interesting as well as useful. This is arguably where things like Linux and Google came from.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, I was kind of a dick saying things this way. But I didn't mean to seem disrespectful. I greatly respect real programmers and I often wish I was one and had the sources for motivation which are available to them. Actually, I was hoping I managed to be a dick to both sides in this post.

<comment><USER5> I think you succeeded in that, it's just going to seem biased to anyone reading it, because they'll inevitably fall one one side or the other and agree with exactly half of your dickish statements.

Maybe I was a little oversensitive :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> (Full disclosure: I definitely fall under the real programmer category)

I agree with about 90% of what the author said. _However_ , I don't know that I agree that the "dudes" and "real programmers" shouldn't work on a project together. In fact, I think it's good for them to be in a state of healthy conflict.

I also would dispute that the "real programmer" would be more productive than the "dude". The real programmer would probably outperform the dude in terms of sheer amount of code written, but the dude is likely to _get more done_.

I think that the ultimate product would be that the dude would actually get the product done and the programmer would make a higher-quality product that won't fall apart at the slightest change.

<comment><AUTHOR> Since you're not the first to say this in the comments to the post, I simply must surrender and at least review the point - indeed it might be good for the project to have both people on the team. But I suppose only when both have certain qualities. What do you think those qualities are? And when does the team of 2 different types outperform the team of equal types?

<comment><USER6> I think that both groups always outperform each other and are always behind each other at the same time. It's that the two groups are really working towards different goals. The dude will likely want to get a _product_ out as quickly as possible. The real programmer will want to make something that will be maintainable and good to work on in the long-term. I think this is why you will see conflict often between the two groups if you're not careful.

Personally, I think that the key is understanding. Both types need to recognize that the other is working towards a valid goal and that sometimes the other's goal is more important. Otherwise, you end up with two people who wonder why they never agree on anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "So, what's a real programmer? I believe it's the one who's obsessed with the programming itself, not with the result. It's the guy who would spam your IM with tons of code and discussions about it 4 times out 5 when you have a conversation."

That sounds to me like pedantry. Isn't the real programmer the one who knows programming well enough that he has not just mastered the detail but can put it in perspective?

</comment><comment><USER8> Oh whatever.

People are continually obsessed with being "real"- being a "real" atheist or a "real" Christian, being a "real" submissive, or a "real" man, or a "real" whatever.

What it really comes down to is that some people think they are better whatever it is- Christian, programmer, or man- than other people. And in order to prove this, they make up some arbitrary definition of what it means to be a "real" this or that.

The only one who cares is you and your big fat ego.

<comment><AUTHOR> You didn't make it to the end of the post, didn't you?

<comment><USER9> In dissecting his statement I presume he is having conflicting issues with his religion and masculinity. Presumably being challenged socially or in an introspective way based on how he "feels" about himself. Possibly soon to be _her_ self.

<comment><USER8> You managed to offend me here, but not for the reasons you think. I have two very close friends who are transgender, one of whom got transitional surgery less than a week ago, so you can go fuck yourself.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Only Way is the Wrong Way - <AUTHOR> http://waiterrant.net/?p=450 <comment><USER3> Am I the only one who parsed that URL as "wait errant"?

<comment><USER4> I can't believe you just said "parsed" instead of "read"

<comment><USER5> Haha. Veritas you can't tell me you've never read something on paper and tried to do a CTRL-F (or equivalent OS Find command) to search for what you were looking for?

<comment><USER6> No, but I've tried pressing spacebar to turn the page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really liked this, so much so I wrote up a post on the topic , check it out if your interested: <http://www.promoterforce.com/blog/2007/05/16/comparing- yourself-is-failure-your-path-is-your-path/>

now back to creating something people want

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Great quote:

 _"If everyone tried following their bliss everyone would be trying to get to the same place at the same time. It'd be a fucking traffic jam. But since no one likes going into the negative there's more room for opportunity - <USER2> competition, less traffic."_

</comment><comment><USER8> I am currently reading "The fates of nations". The resonance with this story is very strong. Perhaps that's just a testament to how good a book it is.

</comment><comment><USER9> I loved the article, but I also came across a gem of a quote in the comments ( <http://waiterrant.net/?p=450#comment-323693> ):

 _Security to me seems like another name for a slow death, where every opportunity for greatness is ignored for fear's sake._

</comment><comment><USER10> Respect for the courage conveyed in the article.

</comment><comment><USER11> this post reads like a parable, not a transcript of an actual conversation. it's cleverly crafted to appeal to anyone who 1) is not extremely wealthy and 2) has the ability to procreate.

it makes us feel better about who we already are. so maybe not parable, but movie script

<comment><USER12> Just because it's well written doesn't mean it's made up. All of the posts on waiterrant read the same way.</comment></comment>


Why David Goodall, 104, Renowned Australian Scientist, Wants to Die - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/03/world/australia/david-goodall-right-to-die.html <comment><USER2> Interesting article about euthanasia with all its pros and cons: [https://www.mydeath- mydecision.org.uk/info/options/assisted-...](https://www.mydeath- mydecision.org.uk/info/options/assisted-suicide-switzerland/).

£9,000 is a lot of money. I wonder, if it'd be possible to donate your organs in exchange to their medical services.

</comment><comment><USER3> "When he was 102 and called Australia's oldest working scientist, the university stirred up a tempest by asking Mr. Goodall to vacate his office on the grounds that he was too frail and a safety risk to himself. He challenged the decision, but he moved closer to home to continue working"

</comment><comment><USER4> An interesting debate that I'm not sure there is a "correct" answer for, but if a brilliant mind such as the man discussed here wants to end his life peacefully, after dedicating his life to science, who are we to prevent him?</comment>


Comcast incorrectly charged 2k customers for exceeding data cap - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/comcast-incorrectly-charged-2000-customers-for-exceeding-data-cap/ <comment><AUTHOR> What scares me the most with consumption economy - the seller is reporting your use and there's little you can do to track yourself. In the case of Comcast it's pretty easy to detect, but when it's AWS or Azure reporting more than what you actually consumed, how do you detect, and how do you prove?</comment>


World Draw - <AUTHOR> https://worlddraw.withgoogle.com/explore <comment><USER2> I'm not really understanding the point of this. I can draw something, then it tries to match it to one of it's cookie cutter things that it knows about, and doesn't seem to use my drawing at all in the final map. So is this just a glorified "thing picker", rather than a big dropdown or something?

<comment><USER3> Yea would have been much more pleasant to just type "fence."

I thought I could place it myself, I was going to be an Internet about it and drop a fence right in the middle of this roundabout with like ten buses going around it, but I'm stuck on this "finding a place in the world," so I don't really get the purpose of this app at all.

I have no way to distinguish if I actually am affecting this "world." For all I know someone is just modeling stuff, and when I draw a "fence" it goes and finds a random fence and says "here's the fence you made, yay for you!"

<comment><USER4> > I have no way to distinguish if I actually am affecting this "world." For > all I know someone is just modeling stuff, and when I draw a "fence" it goes > and finds a random fence and says "here's the fence you made, yay for you!"

I have a feeling that's exactly what's going on here because I drew a small bush and it said "Thank you, the world needed 4 of those!".

Also take a look at where most of the trees were created at. Shoreline Amphitheatre. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This site makes absolutely no sense. Why is there no explanation to what I'm supposed to do and to what is happening? It says it's the "world" but I can barely navigate a small little neighbourhood. I thought I'd be able to explore the whole planet with drawings correlated to the location they're made in. Why does it tell me where people are drawing things from when it really means nothing?

When I finally got around to drawing something, it didn't work. I drew a relatively simple rectangular building and nothing happened. I realized it must be matching based off of things it already knows so I restarted and drew the simplest 3 line car I could. Still nothing. No error, no instructions. Just a trash can and a circular arrow.

This experiment is a failure.

<comment><USER6> I don't know, took me a few moments to create a house boat. Experiment is a success?

<comment><USER7> You didn't create a house boat. Somebody modeled a house boat, gave it two parameters to slightly tweak it. An ML system was trained to classify scribbles as (among others) a house boat.

You scribbled something that the ML system classified as a house boat. None of the characteristics in your drawing moved over to the model. The only creative part (your scribble) was destroyed.

You could've just typed "house boat" and picked the model from a list. The result would be the same.

<comment><USER8> And yet just doodling something raw and having something presentable come out is way more fun than choosing stuff from drop down menus. Everyone is wired differently and this may not work for you but may work for others.

Why even have a GUI why not a CLI which parses a config file that says "house boat".

<comment><USER7> > And yet just doodling something raw and having something presentable come > out is way more fun than choosing stuff from drop down menus.

It's fun for thirty seconds, after which it is just tedious. If you actually want to "get stuff done", like building a toy city, you will want the menu that shows you what's actually available.

> Why even have a GUI why not a CLI which parses a config file that says > "house boat".

Because that's obviously a bad interface as well. It's not like scribbly interfaces are the next step of evolution in human-computer-interaction. They're gimmicks. You're not going to go to Amazon.com and start scribbling something you want to buy. You'll type it in.

<comment><USER9> Overall I agree with you. And I'm pretty disappointed with this experiment page. The previous ones were better for sure.

But to your Amazon example, doodles might be the new best way to find "that thing with the stick out the top and the bell looking thing at the bottom. I forget what it's called"

I'm glad Google is playing around with this. This one though just feels flat compared to the others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I let my 7 year old play with this; she was able to scribble simple things which were recognized pretty well, actually, and was a fun and useful activity. I think most of HN is not the target audience here, and we are reacting to our assumptions based on the title of the project.

<comment><USER11> It's nice to see a single reasonable response here. The entire premise seems to fit a young kid contributing to something, but a bunch of jaded 30 year olds on HN are angry that this tool didn't appeal to them.

<comment><USER12> Heck this site doesn't even work with noscript. I'm outta here. /s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It works completely contrary to what it pretends. There is no creativity and creative collaboration happening here. Everything I draw is turned into a predefined shaped. Everything unique is translated into something generic. I think there is a serious misunderstanding about the value of creativity happening here, and I very much hope this is not the future Google is imagining for us.

<comment><USER14> I've seen withgoogle.com before. withgoogle.com is supposed to invoke collaboration, but with google's reputation as a cold, impersonal corporation where everything is automated and there's hardly ever any technical support, I just mentally shrug it off when I see it.

and we also have abc.xyz and domains.google and other domain shenanigans that I forget about.

I just learned that alphabet.com is different company. I wonder if they've clung to the domain as tightly as nissan.com has clung to theirs or if google doesn't want it that much.

<comment><USER15> Not sure if I understand your comment. Alphabet is google's parent company, allegedly created to assuage the fear of a giant entity by turning it into multiple quite big entities.

<comment><USER16> Alphabet, the owner of alphabet.com appears to be some sort of fleet (as in company car) management service, unrelated to Alphabet the owner of Google.

<comment><USER15> Right, I see. Thank you for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can we all just acknowledge that the "AI" aspect of this is gimmicky and - ignoring that part - Scribblenauts did this way, way better back in like '09?

<comment><USER7> Acknowledged. I would say even Scribblenauts might've been actually a better game without this gimmick. It wouldn't have attracted the same amount of attention though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This AI doesn't seem to recognize my drawing...

[https://imgur.com/a/fwmUEP6](https://imgur.com/a/fwmUEP6)

<comment><USER19> That was a good one!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Amazing idea! Poor execution. I tried to draw something and it basically reduced to an AI doing an object recognition on what I had drawn, then suggesting me the closest matches from its existing database. I clicked on a match, then was able to change TWO parameters describing the object.

It would have been much more interesting if you could draw something, then have an AI try to guess what it would look like in 3D, then add your model to their database. People could then upvote/downvote models to get rid of crappy results, and the AI could use that information to learn what models it messed up generating.

</comment><comment><USER21> > This website is optimized for certain browsers and devices.

> Please _upgrade_ your browser.

Emphasis mine - I'm on Firefox 63. I can't believe this is still happening in 2018. :(

<comment><USER2> I'm on Firefox 63.0.3 and it worked fine

<comment><USER22> Same on 63.0.1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Neat idea, but seems to be limited in user choice.

Tried to draw a couple of things, it picked the closest match, then got stuck on "Finding a place in the world" for me (why can't I pick?).

Also can't seem to draw new things, just pick from the AI guesses, so far as I can tell.

I look forward to poking at the next version.

</comment><comment><USER24> No matter what I draw, I always end up stuck on the "finding a place in the world" step.

<comment><USER7> I guess the world is "full".

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I feel like this essentially exists for the sole purpose of generating a large training set for some sort of drawing analysis.

I wonder if google has some new use case where they want to be able to quickly tag human doodles with their subject matter?

<comment><USER26> Don't worry, this is simply made for tracking users, first one creates few drawings then his unique drawing style is assigned to profile and voila! now you can be recognized anywhere and everywhere by simply drawing a cat. (-:

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Kinda disappointing that the "AI" bit of it is just image recognition.

I thought it was going to be a cool demo on changing 2D drawings to 3D objects.

<comment><USER28> There's probably a project to make here. Take those pixel2pixel models that are able to generate images from drawings, generalize them to 3D, say a pixel2vertex. Would be pretty neat.

The key would be to find a way to constrain the output space so that it's not so vast that it won't be possible to converge to something useful.

<comment><USER29> That would be very interesting, reminds me of an demo a couple years back of sketching buildings and and immediately being translated using procedural shape grammars into 3d.

[http://www-sop.inria.fr/reves/Basilic/2016/NGGBB16/](http://www- sop.inria.fr/reves/Basilic/2016/NGGBB16/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> A lot of cynicism in comments. Seems like an innocuous experiment. Cool graphics. Average experience. But built on the web, that's important. Let's not conspiracy theories get the better of us.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's telling me my browser is unsupported and to use Chrome, but I'm using the latest version on Mac. Anyone else getting this? Works on Safari though.

<comment><USER32> Seems like a bad version check. I'm running latest Beta (Version 71.0.3578.53 (Official Build) beta (64-bit)) on macOS and seeing the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > World Draw determines what someone is sketching and turns it into a 3D model > in WebGL.

This appears to be highly misleading at best. It appears to be a fancy classifier for 2D drawings, that matches to a database of predesigned slightly-customizable 3D models. There's no real connection between the drawing and the model.

</comment><comment><USER34> The graphics are incredibly charming! Would totally play a Sim City / Cities: Skylines etc. type of game with graphics like this and think the drawing controls could be a really nice way of navigating blocks and such on too!

</comment><comment> jade-cat The Draw Things section has no way to finalize the drawing. The only buttons are reset and undo.

Also on the world map there's a bunch of bikes that claim to be cars and pickups.

Firefox on Windows.

<comment><USER6> If the AI recognizes your drawing it will offer a next step.

<comment> jade-cat I tried it on Chrome, and it started recognizing after just one line. On Firefox it never did.

Also, it's sad that your drawing gets discarded as soon as you pick a category.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> An AI Experiment to "draw the world closer together"? While I appreciate this cool technology, it would look like the gushing technoutopianism of say 2010 is still alive and well inside Google despite social unrest across the world. I don't want to explicitly criticize their optimism, but maybe they should have used a more restrained statement to describe their app?

</comment><comment><USER36> I guess it says something that my drawing is so bad it doesn't recognize it as anything? The tool seems oddly non-functional.

</comment><comment><USER37> Well apparently they haven't modeled the Death Star yet... Turns out the closest thing to a Death Star is a bush.

</comment><comment><USER38> I think it's really weird that you can't draw people or animals. I tried to add a t-rex to the world :(

</comment><comment><USER39> Not sure why, but this _crawls_ on Safari, (2013 MBP, 16GB RAM) and demands I update either Chrome or Firefox before it will run, and I generally avoid running the newest version of anything unless completely necessary.

Safari gives me about 4FPS, with nothing else open.

<comment><USER40> > I generally avoid running the newest version of anything unless completely > necessary.

Including your web browser!?

<comment><USER39> _Especially_ my web browser, and iOS/MacOS/Windows.

The security issues are not nearly as important to me as the software actually functioning the way I want.

The best security is just not to use Google products to start, I know, but sometimes it's a necessary evil.

I also avoid upgrading Logic Pro / Final Cut Pro like the plague. Apple has a nasty habit of changing minor UI/UX features that really screw with my workflow, even just the way they moved the 'tempo' field in Logic 10.4.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm guessing the suggested items are the ones hard to differ. Analytics and explanation of patterns to the machine if you ask me.

They just keep pushing out stuff for the same reason on and on

</comment><comment><USER42> You know those joke UI exercises of "the most terrible way to implement a volume slider" or whatnot? This is basically that.

In order to pick a tree prefab, please draw a tree.

</comment><comment><USER43> Slightly the lot of changes regularly impacting the world like technology day by day change, some predictions for the near-future of artificial intelligence.

</comment><comment><USER44> > This website is optimized for certain browsers and devices. Please upgrade > your browser.

... which? Getting this with Chrome 70.0.3538.102 on Mac.

</comment><comment><USER45> Reading through these comments is actually kind of hilarious, HN is definitely embracing The Grinch just in time for the holidays.

</comment><comment><USER46> Seems like a great way to get training data for image recognition (or whatever the term that applies). Kudos google.

</comment><comment><USER47> Surely everyone else just sees this as a scaled way to keep training Google's machine learning models, right?

</comment><comment><USER48> It kind of sucks if you draw something nice, but it can't tell what it is, so that's that.

</comment><comment><USER49> I thought this had something to do with the world chess championship though this is cool too.

</comment><comment><USER50> It's drawing only cactuses?? I didn't know I could draw cactuses so well

</comment><comment><USER51> It'd be cool if you create things like in the Scribblenauts game.

</comment><comment><USER52> I don't get it.

</comment><comment><USER53> Is it just me or is it so slow?

<comment><USER54> The drawing screen lags a little for me. Kinda hard to draw precisely unless you move very slowly.

</comment></comment><comment> black-tea I tried to draw a church but it didn't recognise it.

This is no more advanced, and waaay less useful than this: [http://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html](http://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html) (which is at least 10 years old at this point).

</comment><comment><USER55> okay be honest...how many of you tried drawing a penis?</comment>


Ask HN: Why is CORS the way it is? - <AUTHOR> I understand the problem CORS is trying to solve, but I don't really understand the implementation. The main problem for me is the decreased performance as a result of preflight requests. In order to avoid them, as far as I know you have to resort to hacky solutions like tunneling everything through POST requests with mime type text/plain, or using query params like ?delete=true. These solutions are easy to implement, but hacky and dangerous.
Since it's so easy for developers to circumvent, why did browser vendors force this solution on everyone, rather than leaving cross-origin security up to developers, or at least making CORS opt-in?
What am I missing here? <comment><USER2> Send cache headers in the preflight response so the browser doesn't keep requesting it.

> Since it's so easy for developers to circumvent But not for hackers trying > to inject JS into insecure webpages.

But I do get your point, there should have been a better implementation, I have the same complaint against HTTPS (makes development unnecessarily complicated).</comment>


True 8-bit Color Cycling tags:HTML5, games - <AUTHOR> http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/?sound=0

<comment><USER2> Fantastic demo. Layering and simulated motion were dead-on. I've only done this kind of stuff in more traditional game engines. I'd be willing to be it was less of a headache within a web framework.

Thanks for the share!</comment>


Timescale: SQL made scalable for time-series data - <AUTHOR> http://www.timescaledb.com/ <comment><USER2> Cool!

I briefly skimmed through the paper, and it seems like one of the advertised features is JOINs across chunks. How efficient is it? How do you figure out what join algorithms to use?

<comment><USER3> Hi elvinyung, we have three cases (1) chunks from the same hypertable are effectively UNIONized (not JOIN) when collecting results. (2) If JOINING 2 hypertables we have an upcoming feature of allowing the user to specify two hypertables as colocated, which will put chunks for same time/space partition on same node. Otherwise we will transfer the smaller of the chunks across the network (pretty much the usual join logic. (3) For joining a hypertable with a regular table, the regular tables is fetched if it does not exists locally. We will have an option to materialize regular tables across nodes (great if the table is small and read-only).</comment></comment>


SoftBank is still writing big checks - <AUTHOR> https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/softbank-is-still-writing-big-checkseven-after-the-wework-debacle <comment><USER2> This almost seems like the plot of the James Bond story Casino Royale.

Basically, SoftBank has taken the money of some very unsavory characters (people who are literally willing to cut your body into little pieces) promising big gains and has lost a significant chunk of it.

Now, like Le Chiffre, they are desperately trying to gamble big, hoping that they can make up the lost money by high risk strategies.

<comment><USER3> > Basically, SoftBank has taken the money of some very unsavory characters > (people who are literally willing to cut your body into little pieces) > promising big gain

So has pretty much every major company and every major industry around the world. The saudis are some of the largest investors in pretty much everything - including the tech world.

> and has lost a significant chunk of it.

They haven't lost anything yet. They have made investments. Whether it pans out will take time. Even WeWork is still an investment. And last I heard, their first vision fund actually grew in value rather than declined.

> hoping that they can make up the lost money by high risk strategies.

It is the world's largest venture capital fund. The entire fund exists to invest in high risk companies. What are you talking about?

The fact that you think "This almost seems like the plot of the James Bond story Casino Royale." should tell you your assumptions and conclusions might require re-evaluating.

If what you said was true, softbank wouldn't have been able to create a second vision fund.

[https://group.softbank/en/corp/news/press/sb/2019/20190726_0...](https://group.softbank/en/corp/news/press/sb/2019/20190726_01/)

Instead of parroting news ( which hypes clickbait nonsense about things they don't understand ) and then mixing that with hollywood fantasy, why not look at the data, facts and what is really happening.

<comment><USER4> > They haven't lost anything yet.

They led a WeWork down round and have realized a loss on their previous WeWork investment. They also realized a loss with Uber, a public company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The obvious point is that the 'writing big checks' aligns with what detractors have starting pointing is the problem with Softbank. Take the first example given in the article, Paytm - Softbank are already investors in Paytm, so by inflating a new round of funding they can mark up their previous investment as a profit. Not to mention all weird crossed up fact that Softbank were an investor in Alibaba who are the largest share holder of Paytm. It's all a bit like marking your own homework.

</comment><comment><USER6> I am sorry, what is the problem here? Their Vision Fund is for funding risky ventures with the hope one unicorn pays off the cost of all the others and more. Of course they won't stop. The WeWork exercise might have been about testing the waters of hacking people's perception instead of fundamental analysis and they were riding high for quite a while, so it almost worked for them.

<comment><USER7> WeWork "almost worked" the same way every large bubble or ponzi scheme almost works if you don't count the last day when everything inevitably comes crashing down.

<comment><USER6> I think it was ultimately an exercise to see if people are lazy enough to pay for convenience and brand. It almost worked for them which says a lot about the state of society. One could argue Uber's business model is not that different either...

<comment><USER8> It wasn't even close to working as a business. They lost a fortune and had no path to profitability. It almost worked as a way of extracting dumb money from retail investors.

<comment><USER9> How did it almost work at extracting dumb money from retail investors? It didn't even get close to an IPO. They paid a bunch of banks to have some meetings, but as soon as the numbers were disclosed, no one seems to have been fooled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The lesson for any potential employee is to stay far away from any company funded by SoftBank.

The inflated value may help the CEO get a big payout (like WeWork) or help the company raise lots of capital (like Uber & Paytm).

However, you are probably joining a company with an unrealistic valuation like Uber, WeWork, Wag or Paytm. If you have options, you will always be underwater. If you have RSUs, they may never appreciate.

</comment><comment><USER11> Softbank is not trying to be your local Savings and Loan. They want to be something entirely different. Maybe that's a good idea, maybe it's a bad idea. But they intend to find out.

So why does anyone think they will throw in the towel so long as they have even 1 backer or yen left?!

<comment><USER12> Not to mention it is their money. Spending it on lofty ideas is better than spending it on lobbying for a war.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> They'll make it work.

Worked with the SB guys briefly and my take on it was that they're willing to stack the chips higher than anyone else. And if gravity gets in the way they'll keep stacking until gravity no longer applies

Despite the mockery and we work drama I reckon their all or nothing strategy is sound. If this project fails it'll probably be concurrent with a SV collapse in which case does it even matter?

If you're gonna take risks that involve catastrophic failure anyway you might as well bet big on upside

<comment><USER5> > If this project fails it'll probably be concurrent with a SV collapse in > which case does it even matter?

If I invest $100 in MSFT and you invest your entire life savings in MSFT when the share price goes down it kind of does matter.

>If you're gonna take risks that involve catastrophic failure anyway you might as well bet big on upside

Or, to put it more reasonably, if you're going to take high risk opportunities do it with a chunk of investment you're able to lose, don't risk your entire company on it - which Softbank seem to do. Does it not concern you that Softbank almost managed to bring their entire business into jeopary because of a single failed investment?

<comment><USER13> >If I invest $100 in MSFT and you invest your entire life saving

Thats missing the point I'm trying to convey. Try this analogy:

If you owe the back 100 Mil you've got a problem. If you owe the bank a 100 billion the bank has a problem.

The rules shift if you up the stakes enough. Return, time frames, values etc start becoming malleable concepts. You think it's a coincidence that masa talks about 300 year time frames?

Not convinced this will work. But I am convinced he's a step ahead of everyone else in rolling this dice. And if it does work it'll crush everyone else.

>Or, to put it more reasonably

Nothing about this is reasonable. That's why it could work

<comment><USER14> > _If you owe the back [_ sic _] 100 Mil you 've got a problem. If you owe the > bank a 100 billion the bank has a problem._

SoftBank is big, but not big enough to threaten the solvency of the Gulf states. Nobody has an incentive to bail out the Vision Fund apart from Masa. He's already raiding SoftBank's balance sheet.

The reason the bank line works is banks are highly leveraged. A small hole blows the stack. That gives the $10bn borrower leverage over the trillion- dollar bank. Not so with the Vision Fund, where the prime LPs are lending out of equity and the employees are the ones leveraged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you view SoftBank as a way for Saudi oil money to move out of the country and into public markets at a ~30% discount it takes on a whole new perspective.

</comment><comment><USER16> These people are very clever scammers, I started out with an "Oscar Ford" telling that my initial investment of $US250 will be matched by him. Less than one week later after he had manipulated the figures in my account to look like i'm winning he said that if i put in $5000 i will get a contract to the effect of being 30% insured, and because he never looses and invests in small amounts my $5000 will be safe. Plus i could withdraw that money at any time I choose with no issues. A few days later after he had my account reflecting a further $10,000 in winnings, I was encouraged to put another $5000 towards anther investment. This time my money is 100% insured and again i could withdraw at any time. My account got to around $26,000 in about 2 weeks and i needed to withdraw as we had agreed that I needed the $10,000 at a particular date. At this time i stopped hearing from him because he had tried to convince me that making a withdrawal takes away the benefit of insurance etc. I insisted because i needed the money. My account went up again to over $30,000. I started to contact support in order to make my withdrawal. After a while they became very rude, the person i was trying to plead with to give Oscar my message told me that i was giving him attitude. then as i continued to call, Mr Oscar Ford called me back to say he had just came out of an i think 9 hrs meeting and was fired because he had lost a client's $3000,000. It was a total made up story and I knew it. Before the conversation, my account was over $30,000. By the end of the conversation when i checked again it was suddenly down to $1.00. This is a well laid out scam of a company and my hope here is to help others to not be caught up in their lies like I did.thanks to globalrefundsint dot com for the total recovery of my asset. When you ask to withdraw then they will make you fill out forms confirming that you give them the money hence there is no argument.

</comment><comment><USER17> Lookup "central bank credit guidance".

Japanese central bankers figured out a way of creating money for purposes that are good for society. Like AI, Quantum computing or bio technology and any other hyped up stuff you see on internet.

There were many bad consequences in the past because of money created that way.

With the way SoftBank is giving away money, it looks like "smart credit guidance" is still happening with out any public policy or public awareness.

</comment><comment><USER18> > _The Vision Fund reported an operating loss of $8.9 billion in October > related to WeWork and Uber. The losses are especially concerning because of > the financial structure of the fund, 40% of which takes the form of > preferred stock that promises investors 7% per year. That interest works out > to as much as $2.8 billion annually._

I'm not a believer of the Vision Fund (but it's just a subjective opinion - I'm a pessimist).

> _When SoftBank announced that it expected to raise more than $100 billion > for Vision Fund 2 in July, the firm touted corporate backers Microsoft, > Amazon, Foxconn and several financial institutions. But it only mentioned > one sovereign wealth fund, from the government of Kazakhstan, which has > roughly $60 billion in assets - a far cry from the hundreds of billions > controlled by PIF and Mubadala._

I watched a few documentaries about Kazakhstan last year (for no particular reason - I was just randomly watching TV) and (technically) it seems to be a nice country which has a nice mix of many climates (deserts, mountains, plains - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan) ) and has as well many natural resources (oil, gas, uranium, metals) and is currently trying very hard to develop.

I remember that at that time I mentally wished them well, but when I read now about their involvement in the Vision Fund I immediately thought "hopefully they didn't bet too much on it"... .

<comment><USER19> > I remember that at that time I mentally wished them well, but when I read > now about their involvement in the Vision Fund I immediately thought > "hopefully they didn't bet too much on it"...

Strange choice indeed. Makes you wonder if Borat Sagdiyev was involved somehow.

<comment><USER20> Borat wouldn't be able to recognize the Kazakhstan of today. I went on a mini tour of the "Stans", covering Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Chinese money has radically transformed Kazakhstan. Their per capita GDP is nearly the same as China and the capital city has world class infrastructure now.

<comment><USER18> I hope that as well the rest of the country (not only the capital) got/will get some benefits (e.g. infrastructure, government not totally focused only on the capital, etc...)?

> _Chinese money has radically transformed Kazakhstan_

Was it financed (at least partially) by Cina? I don't remember "Cina" being mentioned in the docs I saw (they were more focused on the nature and/or the people living there being kind-of-ex-russians and/or the resources and/or about the regime).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Cheques.

Although, they should be writing checks into the operations of WeWork.

Edit: Oh, Saudi Arabia and UAE sovereign wealth funds have checked out of the next fund.

<comment><USER22> Cheques is British English and checks is American English.

<comment><USER21> The Vision Fund is in London. Are they the ones writing the cheques? :)

<comment><USER23> The headline for the article is written by an American publication and American based author.

<comment><USER21> By the way...This publication is owned by Morningstar inc. Guess you invested in Morningstar inc. during the dotcom bubble?

Softbank. $91million for 20%</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>